W(h)ither the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)? W(h)ither constructivism? Fixity of norms and the ASEAN Way
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Author | Alan Collins |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117819830469 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117819830469
International Relations
2019, Vol. 33(3) 413 –432
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117819830469
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W(h)ither the Association
of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN)? W(h)ither
constructivism? Fixity of norms
and the ASEAN Way
Alan Collins
Swansea University
Abstract
This article uses the reflection on the direction (whither) and health (wither) of constructivism
and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that was witnessed in 2017 to see
what these deliberations reveal about the fixity of norms and their contestation. The argument
presented is that constitutive norms create fixed parameters of shared understandings but that
within those parameters the meaning and application of the norm can be contested and debated.
This insight helps to bridge the gap between conventional and critical constructivists and shows
that the premise of jettisoning the ASEAN Way as necessary for ASEAN to achieve its ambitious
community-building project is flawed. The argument relies on insights from the constructivist
literature on norm degeneration to show how contestation is not one part of a norm’s life cycle
but rather a constant companion. However, norms are not just contested, but they have fixity,
and here practice theory can help show that the social world is just as much about continuity as
it is change. The ASEAN case study is timely as introspection about the efficacy of its constitutive
norms – the ASEAN Way – was prominent in 2017 as ASEAN turned 50.
Keywords
ASEAN, ASEAN Way, constructivism, norm contestation
Introduction
Turning 50 in 2017 elicited a number of opinion pieces on the health (wither?) and future
direction (whither?) of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and this
coincided with a similar reflection on the health and direction of constructivism in
International Relations (IR). In both cases, the debates and discussions were not new, but
Corresponding author:
Alan Collins, College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK.
Email: a.collins@swansea.ac.uk
830469IRE0010.1177/0047117819830469International RelationsCollins
research-article2019
Article
414 International Relations 33(3)
given constructivism’s application to ASEAN, this introspection provides an opportunity
to discern whether the w(h)ither of both helps to inform the other.
The inspiration for this article’s title lies in Swati Srivastava’s contribution to the
2017 online symposium, ‘Seizing Constructivist Ground? Practice and Relational
Theories’.1 In reference to an International Studies Association–Northeast conference
roundtable in 2012 titled ‘Whither Constructivism?’, Srivastava noted that the partici-
pants, instead of discussing the direction of constructivism (whither), deliberated about
its demise (wither). The demise focuses on what David McCourt’s article, which
inspired the online symposium, refers to as the fractal distinction of constructivism,
which is essentially the division of the constructivist approach into a number of camps,
as a consequence of a cyclical rise and fall of theories’ prominence.2 Of these divisions
within constructivism, the distinction between conventional or mainstream and critical
is the clearest, with the prominence of the former over the latter, and the extent to which
this reflected a betrayal of the early constructivist writings, underpinning the sense of
lament about wither constructivism.3
Whether constructivism is on the wane drew different interpretations of a 2014
Teaching, Research and International Policy (TRIP) survey of the profession. In keeping
with McCourt’s fractal distinction, Jarrod Hayes interprets the TRIP as a discouraging
picture for constructivism with its fragmentation as a coherent research programme and
the infighting between the conventional and critical factions. It is only by overcoming
these divisions – ‘the need to reclaim constructivism from itself by raising awareness of
these social dynamics, combating them, and refocusing attention on the core of the intel-
lectual agenda’ – that constructivism can be more than a ‘convenient foil for rationalist
approaches’.4 In contrast, Ted Hopf interprets TRIP as evidence of constructivism’s rude
health, and that it is precisely its breadth and ability to accommodate diverse social theo-
ries that has ‘spawned a lively and growing interest’ in constructivism and, along with
realism and liberalism, it constitutes IR’s ‘Holy Trinity’.5 If the future direction and
health of constructivism is open to debate, then much the same can be said for ASEAN.
The year 2017 witnessed a range of opinion pieces commenting on ASEAN as it turned
50. As with constructivism, not all lamented the state of the Association, and some were
positively glowing about its achievements – ‘transformative’;6 ‘miracle’, ‘world star’
and one deserving a Noble Peace Prize7 – but there was a distinct sense that ASEAN
faced a series of crises and adjectives such as adrift, confused, divided and weak were
and remain common place. In essence, that ASEAN’s future direction (whither) is far
from certain, including a future of increasing irrelevance (wither).8
In this article, I seek to determine whether it is whither or wither for constructivism
and ASEAN by examining what is at the heart of both: socially constructed norms and
how the answer to w(h)ither relies on understanding the fixity of constitutive norms. By
fixity I mean different actors acknowledge the existence of a constitutive norm – which
is a ‘set of practices that make up a particular class of consciously [or unconsciously]
organized social activity – that is to say, they specify what counts as that activity’ (empha-
sis in original)9 – and in so doing establish parameters within which the shared meaning
of the norm, both what it is and its application, can be contested. It is not the same as
norm rigidity, which implies that the shared meaning is uniformly agreed and non-com-
pliance is exposed by norm violation. I argue that constructivism’s core intellectual
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